Marcelo Caetano

Marcelo Jose das Neves Alves Caetano (17 August 1906-26 October 1980) was Prime Minister of Portugal from 27 September 1968 to 25 April 1974, succeeding Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and preceding the National Salvation Junta. Caetano was the last prime minister of the fascist Estado Novo government, and he was overthrown in the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

Biography
Marcelo Caetano was born in Arganil, Portugal on 17 August 1906, and he studied law before becoming a professor of constitutional and administrative law at the University of Lisbon in 1933. He was a close associate of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and he helped to draft the 1933 constitution. Caetano served as Minister for Colonies from 1944 to 1947, encouraging further economic, political, and administrative integration of the colonies with metropolitan Portugal. He was also President of the Chamber of Estates from 1949 to 1955 and Deputy Prime Minister in 1955, and he left politics in 1959 to become Rector of Lisbon University. When Salazar had a stroke in 1968, he returned and became Prime Minister. He introduced liberal reforms in the economic sphere, but he held back from political reform, and he became hostage to his intransigence towards the colonies, as the Portuguese were exhausted by unwinnable colonial wars. He was deposed in the Carnation Revolution of 1974, and he went into exile in Brazi, dying in Copacabana in 1980 at the age of 74.